I'm Not Going To Fight You
by XXCaptainUsoppXX
Summary: "One armed or one eyed… I won't fight a man who's handicapped." Mihawk's reaction to Zoro's newest scar. Spoilers for the timeskip.


Mihawk's blade was aimed for Zoro's head. If it connected, it would slice his skull cleanly in two.

Zoro ducked and dodged, not quite avoiding the blow. Instead it cut deeply into the left side of his face, slicing into his eye.

An animalistic roar of pain tore from Zoro's throat, escaping past his teeth clenched around Wadou's hilt.

Perona screamed from where she floated in the corner of the training hall. She clapped a hand over her mouth, feeling sick at the sight of the thick red blood streaming down Zoro's face.

Neither swordsman so much as hesitated, though, continuing their fierce battle. Mihawk's idea of training wasn't to _teach_ Zoro, but rather to push the young swordsman to his limits in increasingly intense battles.

It was exactly the sort of training Zoro wanted and expected.

Their battle ended, as it had every day since Zoro's training began, with Mihawk's sword at Zoro's throat, one flick of his wrist away from killing his student.

Zoro was heaving, his body sticky with blood and sweat. He met Mihawk's intense gaze for a moment before dropping his swords to the floor with a loud metallic clang.

Mihawk stepped away from Zoro and sheathed his sword.

"Get Perona to take care of that eye," he said before he swept out of the room.

"I'm not a nurse!" Perona screeched after the master swordsman.

Then she turned to Zoro, who was pressing the heel of his hand to his heavily bleeding left eye.

"Fine. Come to the infirmary," Perona grumbled.

Zoro silently followed her swooping ghostly form out of the training hall.

...

"What the hell are you doing?" Zoro roared, bounding away from Perona.

"Sit down," Perona snapped, holding up a needle and thread. "I've sewn up your wounds before."

"Yeah, but you can't sew up my _eye_. How the hell will I be able to see?"

Perona rolled her eyes.

"Negative Hollow!" she cried, launching her ghosts at the swordsman's chest.

Zoro fell to his knees.

"I'm sorry I was born," he moaned. "I hope I'm reborn as a perverted love-cook."

Perona shoved Zoro's limp body into a sitting position and took advantage of his despondent state to begin sewing up the deep wound on his face.

"You won't be able to see out of this eye, anyways," she explained. "Mihawk totally messed up your eye."

"What?" Zoro shouted, snapping out of his hollow-induced depression.

"Don't move!" Perona shrieked. "And yeah… Mihawk blinded your left side."

With his remaining eye, Zoro stared at Perona's smirking face for a moment.

Then he shrugged.

"At least I have another one."

"_What_? It doesn't make you mad?" Perona shrieked, incredulous.

Zoro shrugged again.

"It's what I signed up for," he said. "I didn't expect to escape Mihawk unscathed. As long as I get stronger, I'll sacrifice anything."

"Stupid un-cute swordsman," Perona grumbled, dressing the stitched-up wound. "No fun. Nothing ever bothers him."

...

A week later, Zoro appeared in the doorway of the training hall, gripping the hilt of one of his swords.

Mihawk was carefully polishing his blade, his back to the door.

"What are you doing here?" Mihawk demanded, not turning around.

"I'm here to train."

"No," Mihawk answered flatly.

"Perona said the wound's healed enough. I'm more than ready to start training again."

"I'm not going to train you anymore."

"What?" Zoro demanded, clenching his fists. "But it hasn't even been a year yet! I need to become as strong as I can when I reunite with Luffy."

"You're training has ended," Mihawk stated, finally turning to face his student. "One armed or one eyed… I won't fight a man who's handicapped."

Zoro unsheathed a sword with lightning speed and threw himself at his teacher.

"Then it's a damn good thing losing an eye didn't make me handicapped!" he roared.

The sound of blades crashing into each other echoed through the training hall as Mihawk blocked his student's blow.

"I won't fight you," he repeated, his voice as low and even as ever.

"Too bad," Zoro replied, his face twisting into a grin filled with bloodlust and adrenaline. "Because I'm going to fight you."

...

"I'm not going to fight you, Roronoa."

Those became the words that triggered the swordsmen's battles every day, until they became nothing more than a habit.

The rest of the two years passed in a rush of clanking swords and traded blows, until it was the day for Zoro to set off back to Sabaody to reunite with his crew.

"You had a boat all along and we never went anywhere?" Perona shrieked as the three of them rounded a high, rocky cliff and came upon a fairly large ship.

"Yes," Mihawk answered flatly.

It occurred to Zoro that they had never wondered how Mihawk had arrived at the island after the Marineford War. The war that had stolen Luffy's brother from him.

Zoro frowned, wondering what Luffy would be like after these two years apart. What the whole crew would be like… how much they had changed.

He'd changed, too. A few more scars, a blind spot to cover and a huge leap closer to achieving his dream… he wasn't the same Roronoa Zoro he had been on Sabaody two years before. He was stronger, and he was sure his crewmates had become stronger, too.

They would be stronger pirates, but they would still be the Straw Hat pirates. Theirs was a bond that a few years could never break.

"Hurry up you guys!" Perona shouted from the ship's deck.

Zoro grabbed the ship's railing and swung himself up onto the deck next to Perona.

"You coming?" he asked, looking down at Mihawk.

The master swordsman shook his head, then tossed an Eternal Pose up to his student.

"Alright, then. Let's go Perona," Zoro said, turning to her.

"What? Aren't you going to say goodbye to him?" she demanded.

"Why? It's not like we'll never see each other again," Zoro answered, holding up the Eternal Pose. "How do you use this thing, anyways?"

"When are you going to see Mihawk again?" Perona asked, with a knowing smirk.

Zoro frowned at her.

"I have to defeat him someday. To become the world's greatest swordsman."

"I'm not going to fight you, Roronoa," Mihawk called to Zoro.

Zoro looked down at his teacher of two years. The master swordsman almost seemed to be smiling.

"I know," Zoro replied, allowing himself a small grin as well. "I'm going to fight you."


End file.
